Groups Focus on MPS Reform
Milwaukee Public Schools are the focus of several reform efforts at the
local and state levels.
- Locally, MPS officials and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education
Association have been working on reform efforts that include a nine-point
legislative agenda.
- MTEA and WEAC are inviting state legislators to visit Milwaukee schools
next month. School visits are tentatively scheduled to take place March
9 and 16. (Watch OnWEAC for more details and coverage.) Last fall, Assembly
Education Committee Chair Luther Olsen visited
North Division High School.
- The budget adjustment
bill introduced by the governor last week includes requirements
that MPS improve its graduation, attendance, dropout, and 3rd grade
reading score rates or face the turnover of control of MPS to a commission
that would run the district as a charter school district.
- The Department
of Public Instruction has prepared a report that contains a variety
of recommendations to improve Milwaukee schools.
- A group of Milwaukee
African American ministers has also been debating MPS improvement.
The alliance is asking the state to spend $100 million on class size
reduction, and add nurses, summer school and evening programs at MPS
schools. The group also opposes voucher programs, saying vouchers offer
“small simplistic and entirely ineffective answers to a very large,
complex problem.”
Posted February 13, 1998